Heritage Lottery Fund

The Archives of Great Expectations: Heritage Lottery Fund Promotion Poster

On Wednesday 7th January 2009 the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded a grant of up to £154,500 to the Friends of Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre (FOMA) for an exciting new project which made available for research for the first time the contents of 500 boxes of the Rochester City Archives – the so-called Archives of Great Expectations.

The Rochester City Archives form the biggest archival collection in the Medway area and access to it will enhance the understanding of many aspects of British history. Rochester and its Diocese has long associations with London and the famous author, Charles Dickens, who lived at nearby Gad’s Hill, included the Kentish city in many of his works. The archives cover the period 1227 to 1974 and include maps, photographs, building plans, heraldic and manorial records, records of land use, title deeds, rate books, records of trade and industry, public health, and transport. In short, a gold-mine for historians.

Only FOMA members were eligible to apply as volunteers on this exciting project. Details of how to join FOMA can be found here.

FOMA Awarded Heritage Lottery Fund Grant!

The Archives of Great Expectations: Heritage Lottery Fund Promotion Poster

The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded a grant of up to £154,500 to the Friends of Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre (FOMA) for an exciting new project which will make available for research for the first time the contents of 500 boxes of the Rochester City Archives – the so-called Archives of Great Expectations.

On Wednesday, 7th January the Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre (MALSC), hosted a special reception to celebrate this extraordinary boost to Medway’s heritage. Several rare and rarely seen documents relating to the history of the area were also on display.

The Rochester City Archives form the biggest archival collection in the Medway area and access to it will enhance the understanding of many aspects of British history. Rochester and its Diocese has long associations with London and the famous author, Charles Dickens, who lived at nearby Gad’s Hill, included the Kentish city in many of his works. The archives cover the period 1227 to 1974 and include maps, photographs, building plans, heraldic and manorial records, records of land use, title deeds, rate books, records of trade and industry, public health, and transport. In short, a gold-mine for historians.

Cllr Howard Doe, Medway Council’s Portfolio Holder for Community Services said, “Some of the most important archives in the country are held in this collection, relating to Rochester, the second oldest Norman town in England. This is great news for the Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre and for the people of Medway, especially students and history enthusiasts, who will benefit from this project when it is completed.”

The project is expected to last around three years and will be led by a professional archivist, appointed by Medway Council, and two volunteer teams of 16. The volunteers will be selected from local enthusiasts, including members of FOMA, and those currently working on the Victoria County History of Kent, England’s Past for Everyone project, also supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and coordinated by the University of Greenwich. The teams will sort, arrange and catalogue the collection, and identify documents requiring conservation and repair.

Eventually the catalogue to the collection will be accessible online to historians worldwide on MALSC’s well known website, CityArk, http://cityark.medway.gov.uk/, and via a link from the University of Greenwich’s website of the Victoria County History of Kent, England’s Past for Everyone project. Volunteers will also mount touring exhibitions, produce interpretation packs and CDRoms.

FOMA Chairman, Tessa Towner commented: “We are absolutely thrilled that in just two years we have achieved so much for the Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre, and the award from the Heritage Lottery Fund is a fantastic bonus in these tough financial times. The project to conserve, catalogue and publish the Rochester City Archives will enhance everyone’s understanding of our history and the heritage of north Kent and the Medway area.”

February 2010

Valerie Rouland joins the team!

FOMA is delighted to announce the appointment of Valerie Rouland as Project Archivist to begin work to catalogue, conserve and make available for research the contents of the 500 boxes of Rochester City Archives, the Archives of Great Expectations.

Valerie is from the northwest of France, having spent most of her childhood in Normandy on her parents’ farm. She read History at the University of Tours and in 1995, thanks to an Erasmus grant, went to study at the University of Leeds, undertaking research for a dissertation on 18th century religious life in Yorkshire. Valerie then worked for several organisations in the UK, from the Wordsworth Trust in Cumbria to the National Archives at Kew. In 2004, after attending the archive course at the University of Liverpool, she took up her first professional post for the Cumbria Archive Service at Barrow-in-Furness, followed by a contract with Durham University, cataloguing probate records of the Diocese of Durham. Valerie is looking forward to learning the history of Rochester and ploughing through its archives!

May 2010

First Quarterly Report for the Archives of Great Expectations

Alison Cable, Borough Archivist

This is the first of the quarterly reports, edited from that presented to the FOMA Committee, as per the project timetable to catalogue, conserve and make available for research the contents of the 500 boxes of Rochester City Archives, the Archives of Great Expectations.

Introduction: the appraising, sorting, arranging and cataloguing process
The first stage of any cataloguing process involves establishing the authenticity and provenance of the material. This entails a meticulous search through accessions records to identify the donors and depositors, along with the custodial and administrative history of the document(s).

The Rochester City Archive collection is made up of numerous accessions. The core Rochester City Archives (e.g. minutes, financial records, charters) were initially catalogued some twenty years ago but there appears to be additional material created by Rochester City Council (RCC) located within mixed consignments sent over from successor authorities. This means that there are likely to be in the region of 650 boxes of material (as opposed to the initial 500 box estimate).

Once all relevant material has been identified it must be appraised in order to ascertain whether it is suitable for permanent retention. This appraisal ensures that we are adhering to relevant legislation (e.g. The Data Protection Act 1999; Public Records Act, 1958) and compliance with the Service’s Collecting Policy.

We also need to avoid retaining secondary (e.g. printed material) that is duplicated elsewhere and non-current records that yield little information of historical or legal worth. Overall, we should always be able to justify why we are deciding to keep a document permanently.

The aim of the overall cataloguing process is not just to list and number each item but to be able to reflect the administrative structure of the organisation (and its departments) by means of arranging and describing each series and document within it, so that they are interpreted in terms of their original place and purpose within the original administrative structure. These processes help ensure the integrity of the documents as sources of primary evidence for researchers.

Existing catalogues serve to form the basis for gaining an overview of the collection and, more important, the structure of the organisation. The archivist will be able to identify gaps in the record series (which may be plugged by the un-catalogued material). It is often possible to augment and enhance existing catalogues but in some cases the structure is poor and it is advisable to start a new catalogue from scratch. At present we would hope to be able to do the former, but we will need to add in additional series and sub-series, and it may transpire that it is necessary to re-number some items (original reference numbers will be recorded at the end of the relevant document description. We will consult a number of classification schemes used for similar collections (e.g. Dover Borough) before we finalise the classification scheme for this collection. In general, Borough and City Councils will generate much the same record series, but of course, each individual authority may have additional unique series (e.g. Rochester Oyster Fishery).

In effect a template for the arrangement of pre-1974 local council archives will exist in most county archives offices, which should save us the trouble of starting from scratch- providing that RCC does not have many anomalies!

August 2010

Quarterly Report for the Archives of Great Expectations

Alison Cable, Borough Archivist

This is the second of the quarterly reports, as per the project timetable to catalogue, conserve and make available for research the contents of the 500 boxes of Rochester City Archives, the Archives of Great Expectations.

Our project archivist, Valerie Rouland, has been concentrating on sorting and assessing the Twentieth Century records which form part of the Rochester City Archives. The types of records encountered include files relating to town planning, drainage, road works etc. There is a huge quantity of material and sorting them into a coherent arrangement is taking a great deal of time.

The majority of the uncatalogued records are those created by the Town Clerk’s and Surveyor’s Departments. There are at least fifty boxes of files that require some sort of repackaging.

Valerie is currently working on the cataloguing of the charters and customals. Surprisingly, although the charters have been in our custody for some years, none of them have been allocated reference numbers. They will now be catalogued under the reference. RCA/C.

Alison and Valerie will shortly be identifying items that require extensive conservation work and will be making arrangements to obtain advice and estimates. Medway Council is committed to the allocation of £12,000 in total to cover conservation costs. This includes repacking materials; document repair, microfilming (e.g. minute books) and the digitisation of selected items for display online.

Valerie has identified projects for which we need volunteers:

Town Clerks/Surveyors files (large quantity): Repackaging.
Team of 2 to 3 people required

Drawings of private connections to sewers: approx 15 rolls.
1 (or possibly 2) volunteers required to identify contents of each roll and to ensure documents are packaged and labelled appropriately

We hope to start this first phase of volunteer work at the beginning of September 2010. Volunteering sessions will take place on Wednesday mornings (the exact times are to be agreed, but it is envisaged that we will finish at 1.00 pm at the latest to enable staff to deal with group visits etc in the afternoons).

In conclusion, Elaine Gardner has submitted the Education and Outreach Plan to our HLF advisor and this has now been approved. A synopsis is as follows.

FOMA members to start work on an exhibition to publicise the collection towards the end of the year.

October – December 2011

Online catalogue completed

Exhibition mounted, at MALSC in first instance.

January – December 2012

Ongoing programmes disseminating information

In addition there will be regular quarterly articles in The Clock Tower and notable finds will be reported in the press and on the Medway Council website. Also to be added is timing of student placement to run from September to May

The success of the outreach programme will be measured using:

Feedback forms at talks, exhibitions and other events

Count of numbers attending exhibitions, talks and other events

Count of website hits on Archive catalogue

Recording how people contacting MALSC heard of the service

Using registers of those coming into MALSC to determine if numbers have increased

November 2010

Quarterly Report for the Archives of Great Expectations: July to September 2010

Alison Cable, Borough Archivist

This is the third of the quarterly reports, as per the project timetable to catalogue, conserve and make available for research the contents of the 500 boxes of Rochester City Archives, the Archives of Great Expectation.

Cataloguing
The cataloguing and appraisal of the Rochester City Archive collection continues. The charters and custumal have been catalogued under the reference RCA/C and the main documents for the Town Clerk and City Surveyor departments have been catalogued under the references RCA/TC and RCA/CS.

Valerie Rouland, the project archivist, is currently working on the Finance documents. Originally, the documents were arranged by record type, however, they have now been re-organised in order to show their provenance. The new arrangement is as follows:
RCA/N1 Chamberlains’ records (up to 1837)
RCA/N2 Water bailiffs’ records
RCA/N3 Rentals (or ‘constats’)
RCA/N4 Reference not used
RCA/N5 Treasurers’ records (1837 – 1974)

Volunteers
Four volunteers have been working on the collection since mid September. They are currently working on the Town Clerk’s files: renumbering, repackaging, removing all paperclips, etc.. This ensures that the files will be suitable for handling when the collection is finally made available to the public. This is valuable work and can be quite time-consuming. Some files are encased in folders with metal holding bars or strips that are rusty or sharp. This is not only damaging to the paper but could also cause cuts and abrasions when being handled by researchers. In these cases the papers have to be removed from the metal holders and re-threaded together with archive tape. Our volunteers have tackled the repackaging work with enthusiasm and besides making the files tidy and easier to handle, they are finding that they are able to get a good overview of the sort of information contained within the files.

Conservation
The first batch of damaged documents has been sent to a conservation workshop for assessment. The cost of the subsequent work will be met from the archive budget as part of our contribution to the Heritage Lottery Fund Project. The items sent include coroner’s records, maps, and an early council minute book. We have also purchased a substantial amount of acid-free folders, brass paper clips, archive tape etc., to be used for repackaging.

There have been some amendments compared to the current catalogue. Under this section, Valerie will make a list of the coroners’ indictments (when the documents return from conservation).

Official (RCA/O)There are also six new series:

Charities (RCA/Q)

Library (RCA/LB)

Pavement commissioners (RCA/PC)

Weight and measures (RCA/WM)

Health Department (RCA/H)

Education (RCA/E)

Volunteer Work
Since mid-September, a team of volunteers has been going through the Town Clerk’s files, renumbering and improving the packaging. The next stage of the process will be to deal with the City Surveyor’s files, in the same way.

Conservation
The first batch of records have been sent for conservation, the cost of which will be born by Medway Council as part of its contribution to this project.

Some items which might be suitable for digitisation:

Coroner’s inquests

Reports of the Medical Officer of Health

Extracts from three volumes of documents (1577 to 1810), which were removed from the Town Clerk’s offices. They include chamberlain’s documents; indictment for slander and assault 1582; information regarding theft of a time of pump rod and assault; chamberlains’ accounts of money paid by order; accounts of the late Mayor; letters regarding tithes; names of officers chosen at Court Leet; presentments of various boroughs; view of frankpledge; draft chamberlain accounts; list of victuallers; lists of inhabitants of various boroughs; bills for prisoners expenses with names; lists of tradesmen with amounts; rentals, etc.

Council minutes (RCA/A1/4)

Minutes of the Estates and General Purpose Committee (I think they would be the most interesting ones).

Work on cataloguing the RCA collection is on target, so during January to April 2011, Valerie will be cataloguing the deposited records of the Sir Joseph Williamson Mathematical School (collection ref: C/ES/306/4).

May 2011

Quarterly Report for the Archives of Great Expectations: January to March 2011

Alison Cable, Borough Archivist

Cataloguing
The cataloguing of Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical school collection started at the beginning of January 2011. First of all, we carried out some research on the organisation of the school and its history, in order to gain an understanding of its functions and activities. Then, by sorting through the 58 boxes, we identified:

Duplicate documents and records of non-archival value. They will be given back to the school. They amount to six and a half boxes.

Documents containing information about named individuals. They will not be made accessible to the public and this will be highlighted in the catalogue.

Parts of the collection have already been arranged and listed at item level. This arrangement will be respected in the catalogue.

The structure of the catalogue is as follows:

C/ES 306/4/1

Governors’ documents

1710 – 1938

C/ES 306/4/2

Headmasters’ documents

1913 - 1970

C/ES 306/4/3

Administration

1913 - 1970

C/ES 306/4/4

Finance records

1879 – 2001

C/ES 306/4/5

Legal and estate records

1707 – 1988

C/ES 306/4/6

Staff records

1876 – 1962

C/ES 306/4/7

Pupils’ records

1824 – 2008

C/ES 306/4/8

Publications

1885 – 2002

C/ES 306/4/9

School activities

1885 – 1997

C/ES 306/4/10

Photographs

1906 – 2000

C/ES 306/4/11

Plans and drawings

c.1809 – 1997

C/ES 306/4/12

Old Williamsonian Club

1901 – 1992

C/ES 306/4/13

History of the school and information about former pupils

1891 – 2010

C/ES 306/4/14

Books

1715 – 1913

C/ES 306/4/15

Objects

c.1930 – 1940

C/ES 306/4/16

Miscellaneous

1928 – 1969

C/ES 306/4/17

Rochester Grammar School for Girls, Maidstone Road, Rochester

1911 – 1950

Whilst cataloguing, we are also taking the opportunity to improve the packaging of the records: paperclips have been removed and all folders have been replaced with acid–free folders or envelopes.

Volunteers
The first part of the volunteer work ended in February 2011. Since mid September, they improved the packaging of all the Town Clerk and City Surveyor’s files: a total of 191 boxes. The work gave them the chance to familiarise themselves with the collection and the files they found interesting were the basis of a talk which took place at the end of February. The second part of the volunteer work will start mid April and will involve some repackaging and renumbering but will also call for palaeography skills.

The tasks are as follows:

RCA/N1/2/1: 1 bundle of Chamberlain’s vouchers (circa 300 documents) (1577–1834) (Miscellaneous bundle of bills and vouchers relating to meals, fines for prostitution, maintenance of the town clock, etc). To sort documents into chronological order and to assign numbers – a task for one volunteer over three weeks (palaeography skills useful).

Repackaging and renumbering finance and legal files (two to three volunteers over 1 or 2 weeks).

Transcribing of documents to be digitised, for instance, early coroner's inquisitions, etc. This work would take place after the volunteers attending a palaeography course. Volunteer help may be required for other tasks, yet to be decided.

Conservation
Documents sent for conservation as part of this year’s quota have now been repaired and were returned to us at the end of March 2011 thus enabling further cataloguing work to be undertaken. The repaired documents include:

This work, plus the repacking materials, represents Medway Council’s £3,000 contribution for 2010 to 2011. We are now compiling a list of work which will need to be undertaken during this financial year.

Project Archivist, Valerie Rouland (pictured) has made excellent progress on the Heritage Lottery Fund project this last quarter with her team of volunteers.

Quarterly Report for the Archives of Great Expectations: April to June 2011

Valerie Rouland, Project Archivist
Cataloguing
1. Sir Joseph Williamson mathematical school.
The catalogue has been completed and is now available on CityArk. All documents have been repackaged.

2. Rochester City archives
We have now catalogued the records of the Rochester Oyster and Floating Fishery and the Admiralty Court. Both institutions still exist and it was decided to include documents of the successors’ authorities to Rochester City Council.

The records have been arranged as follows:

RCA/J3

Admiralty Court

1565-2003

RCA/J3/1

Registers

1565-1928

RCA/J3/2

Minute books

1754-1928

RCA/J3/3

Jurymen

1865-2000

RCA/J3/4

Presentments

1619-1903

RCA/J3/5

Summons and warrants

1626-1826

RCA/J3/6

Registrar’s files

1955-2003

RCA/J3/7

Rules and orders

1729-1906

RCA/J3/8

Printed material

19C - 1997

RCA/Y

Rochester Oyster and Floating Fishery

1628-2005

RCA/Y1

Minute books

1816-1860

RCA/Y2

Enrolment registers

1743-2005

RCA/Y3

Acts of Parliament

1727-1867

RCA/Y4

Legal documents

1628-1965

RCA/Y5

Registrar’s files

1880-1975

RCA/Y6

Finance records

1777-1994

RCA/Y7

Title

1869-1960

RCA/Y8

Miscellaneous documents

1823-1841

The next stage will be to place Rochester City Council catalogue on CityArk. Training will be provided to the project archivist for this task.

Volunteers
The volunteers have completed the repackaging and renumbering of finance documents as well as transcribing a selection of 17th century coroner inquests. The next stage, starting in July, will involve the renumbering and repackaging of 40 boxes, including the records of the Rochester Oyster and Floating Fishery and Admiralty court.

An additional note from Alison Cable:

Cityark
At the start of July 2011, Valerie will start to input the new version of the RCA catalogue onto Cityark (cityark.medway.gov.uk/). During this time, we will need to delete and alter parts of the catalogue that already appear on Cityark. Researchers who require access to the Rochester City Archives can use the paper catalogue in the MALSC search room. If you have any queries about document reference numbers please check with Valerie or Alison.

Education/Outreach
In July 2011, we will be sending out letters to Medway secondary schools to invite them to a presentation at MALSC in September at which we will introduce them to the work we do, and our HLF project. We hope that this will result in partnership work with the schools, enabling students to utilise the Rochester City Archives as part of their history studies.

November 2011
Quarterly Report for the Archives of Great Expectations: July to November 2011

Alison Cable, Borough Archivist

RCA Catalogue
Project Archivist, Valerie Rouland (pictured) has now completed the inputting of the new catalogue onto Cityark, so with the exception of any odds and ends that might be found in the next few weeks, the cataloguing is now complete.

Conservation
Some of the Quarter Sessions rolls (RCA/J2) have been identified for urgent repair and have been sent to a specialist conservator. The work to repair and clean the damaged parchments is likely to take several months.

Volunteers
Since the beginning of September, the FOMA volunteers have been working on the exhibition entitled Archives of Great Expectations: documents and discoveries from Rochester City records. They are currently undertaking research on various aspects of Rochester City Council’s work and responsibilities. The exhibition will be on display at Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre from 12 January to 28 February 2012. After that, we will seek to have the exhibition installed in other venues around the Medway Towns.

Outreach work
We have met with several representatives of local schools in order to acquire some feedback from history teachers as to how we can use the City Archives to tie in with the History National Curriculum. As a result of our discussions we are currently planning workshops for pupils looking at the Home Front during both World Wars. We have already had one successful workshop on Public Health (Rochester and Strood) with the Robert Napier School. We hope to offer this workshop to other secondary schools and Alison is currently working on a subsequent workshop looking at aspects of the History of Medicine and Health care that she will put together with Robert Napier School’s Head of History.

November 2011Update to Education and Outreach report - April to November 2011

Elaine Gardner, FOMA Vice Chairman

The volunteers attended a one-day paleography course on 18 May held at the Studies Centre (MALSC), which was also available to other members of the public, and then began the daunting task of transcribing 17th Century coroners’ reports. The word aforesaid quickly became easy to spot appearing in virtually every line!

Volunteers at work transcribing coroners’ reports

The FOMA display at Rochester’s first Civic Day

The volunteers are now involved in the research and selection of material for the various aspects of the collection to be included in the major exhibition which opens at MALSC in early January and runs for six weeks before moving to other venues. Each volunteer is illustrating a different aspect of the archive. FOMA also took a stand at the first Civic Day held in Rochester on 25th June, which gave us a chance to bring MALSC to the public’s attention and show some of the material contained in this archive. The event was held at Eastgate House, the former Rochester Museum, so it proved interesting that some of the documents on display referred to the Corporation’s purchase of the building to create a museum as its Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee project.

The talks given to various groups have been successful. I repeated my talk on Rochester High Street in the 19th Century at the FOMA June meeting. At this event most of the audience were familiar with MALSC and had visited on numerous occasions, but were still unaware of the vast photo archive that existed or knew what Rochester High Street had been in its past. I also visited Walderslade Girls’ School during their activity week to give a talk on aspects of Rochester and its history, as the school had to abandon a plan to take the year group on a tour of Rochester. The repeat visit to talk to Year 8 at Chatham Boys’ Grammar School also went ahead at the end of May.

Tessa Towner was invited to speak at a Strood Fellowship meeting in September where she gave an extended version of the talk on our findings so far which she had given to FOMA members in February. Odette Buchanan was invited to give a talk to The Friends of the Vines at the end of October on the history of the Vines park in Rochester, formerly the St Andrews Priory vineyard; this involved delving into many of the archive records. I have been invited to talk to the local Borstara (Borstal Active Retirement) group in January on my experiences of volunteering on this project and some of the material found. Those of us working on this project have also been asked to outline the work at a Thank You morning being held in December by the study centre staff for all MALSC volunteers.

The links with schools and education continue. Ms Slater, Head of History at Robert Napier School, brought a group of students studying the History of Medicine at GCSE to look at public health in the Medway area. The documents put together for the students included some from this project archive. Feedback was good and she is bringing in another group soon. Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School (The Math School) has also been on a visit to use this material. Staff from The Hundred of Hoo School made contact in May wanting to be able to research World War One and two casualties from the Hoo Peninsula to make their annual Remembrance Day assembly more meaningful. Brian Joyce, one of the volunteer team, worked with the school to find relevant material. Brian has also given a presentation at Robert Napier recently for Black History Month using archive material and local parish records.

The planned invitations to the dozen secondary schools in the area, with which we have yet to have contact, went out too close to the end of the summer term (as a result of work load on the archive staff), so the uptake to meetings held at the beginning of September was lower than hoped for. However St. John Fisher School and Chatham Grammar School for Boys attended and were both keen to use archive material. John Fisher School study Crime and Punishment as part of their GCSE history course and want to see material on police and policing in the area, which will incorporate material from the RCA Watch committee records amongst others. They also were interested in using the public health material.

Chatham Grammar School for Boys was interested in the effects of World Wars One and Two on the local area, and a lot of information on this can be found in the RCA Town Clerk files. The archivists have begun putting together facsimiles of relevant documents and will be helped by volunteers once the exhibition research is over.

In January we plan to re-contact those schools who did not respond previously.

Odette Buchanan has put together some leaflets designed for schools on different periods of Rochester history which, though not using material from the project archive at this stage, are furthering knowledge of Rochester’s heritage and which form the basis for further research at MALSC. The Bishop of Rochester Academy has made contact with MALSC to enable students to visit on work experience.

On the publicity front, The Quarterly Reports of ongoing progress with the project have been published in The Clock Tower. We now need to get a progress report and examples of the material on to the websites for FOMA and the Medway Archives for the general public to access. The catalogue of the project material is now on Cityark and we need to start advertising this. I have twice contacted by e-mail the editor of the Medway Council bi-monthly newsletter Medway Matters, which is circulated to all Medway households, to ask for the opportunity to contribute an article but have yet to have any response. I will persevere, as an article in the January edition to coincide with the exhibition would be very useful!